Austin Home (#111, 4.20.12)

I posted a couple of weeks ago about the many toeholds of home I have. The Austin house is the most suburban, a warm, open sprawl on one floor in the northwest of the city. It’s far enough out of the centre that we have a view of green behind us, can place a beacon for hummers.

(#111).

It’s a classic American cul de sac, houses of a type but not identical.

Neighbours who come out and help you jump your car when you forget to turn off the rental car lights and the battery dies.

It’s an echo in some ways of the place I’d stay in with N in a suburb of Rochester, even occupying the exact spot on the clock of the cul de sac. But where Roc was often humid and dark, garden untended, pool chemicals often off balance, in Austin, we call in birds against the hot sun, and Finch wades into the pond in his underwear to pull up weeds and plant lilies.